Soul Destruction Diary

Repetitions of a Shattered Mind – 22 December 2000 – 1.25AM

Soul Destruction - Diary of a London Call Girl

I’m shivering. I shuffle under the covers. I put my head on the pillow. I force my eyes closed but they reopen of their own accord. I shut them again. Again, they reopen. I don’t have control over them.

“What’s the matter?” Lorna asks.

“This doesn’t feel like heroin,” I say. Then I remember I don’t trust her anymore. That’s why my eyes won’t stay shut.

“This is what the poison’s like here. It’s different from the shit you get in the UK.”

I don’t believe her. That’s not right. It wasn’t like this last night when we were shooting up together. She’s not all over me anymore. She never really fancied me. She just wanted to reel me in. I mustn’t close my eyes. I have to stay awake. Otherwise, she’ll have me, and everything I own that’s in my hotel suite.

“Try to sleep.” Lorna fiddles with my hair. I don’t like her touching me. Maybe I feel like this because I know she’s shaven. Maybe it’s not the heroin. Perhaps it’s all anxiety. If I talk about it, it might pass. That’s what happens sometimes when I talk to Shelley or Dr Fielding.

“I feel panicky.” I sit up and lean against the headboard. “Do you ever get that?”

Lorna looks at me. “Yes, not often but sometimes.”

“Why do you want to hang out with me?” I ask.

“Because I like you. You’re funny. We’re into the same things. Why do you think?”

To answer her question I need to leave honesty at this point. If she is here to rob me, there’s no good going to come from making her aware that I suspect it. And if she isn’t here to do that, then telling her will only offend and probably upset her. “Sometimes I just get low self-esteem,” I say. It’s the kind of thing Dr Fielding would say. In fact, Dr Fielding does say it and I say to her: that’s not true – I have no self-esteem.

I didn’t used to feel this badly about myself. Long ago, I did. But a few years ago, I was getting my life together. It wasn’t all okay, but I was better than this, not as low as this. I was overcoming the posttraumatic stress – the flashbacks, the nightmares, all of it was getting better. I stopped working as a call girl in 1997. Then not long after, it all got fucked up. It’s my own fault. I couldn’t handle not working. I had to go back. If only I’d known what would happen. I would never have done it. What example was I setting my younger sisters? How selfish I’ve been. It’s my fault what happened to Milly.

I push a cigarette between my lips and light it. “How long did you work in a brothel for?” I ask Lorna.

“A couple of years.”

“Were you able to shut down when you saw punters?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did you switch off when you were with them? Disappear somewhere else in your head? It’s like punters I’ve fucked could walk past me in the street and unless they’re regulars I wouldn’t even recognise them. Do you know what I mean?”

“Yes, yes of course I did that.” Lorna’s doing that twisting thing with her hair. The same thing I do, except she weaves a blonde strand between her ring and middle fingers.

“I think it’s ‘cos most of us were abused as kids.” If she shuts down, I’m nearly sure she was too. “That’s what my therapist says. That’s what makes us able to do that shutting down thing. I thought it was good but it’s not. I’ve got fragmented memories. They’re coming up – the feelings from them. That’s what happened last night when I was with you.” Part of me wants to stop now but I feel the need to carry on. “Because you’re shaven down there, it makes me think of a child. I see myself being abused again. I can feel it.”

I wish I hadn’t said that now. The feelings are becoming stronger, not weaker. The anxiety I feel is combined with a physical flashback. Electricity is powering through my legs. I shake my legs as if that’s going to shake it off. I know it doesn’t work. I can feel myself rocking. I can’t stop it. The tears are coming. I can’t move.

Lorna slides along the bed. She sits right up close to me. “You’ll be okay. I’m here.” She slips her arm over my shoulder. She pulls my head into her breasts. I don’t want to be touched.

Not the Girl I Thought You Were – 22 December 2000 – 12.15AM

Soul Destruction - Diary of a London Call Girl

It’s just gone midnight. I don’t want Lorna in my hotel suite anymore. I want it back to myself. I want her to go. The heroin, though, she can leave here with me. We’ve had one hit. For some reason, I feel anxious. I want the next fix now. I don’t want to make out with Lorna. I don’t want a flashback. My sex drive has vanished. I felt drawn to Lorna earlier. Now I don’t, not in the slightest. I feel really uncomfortable. Although we only shot up heroin, I feel like I’ve been on the crack pipe. This isn’t how I usually feel on smack.

This is really strange. Maybe it was bad gear. Maybe that’s what it was. I want to ask Lorna if she feels strange too but I feel too strange in myself to talk. We’re lying on the bed in silence. At least we’ve got our clothes on. Her arm’s around my waist as she’s cuddling into me. I don’t like it. It doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t feel right. I don’t feel like I’m me anymore. This isn’t any kind of flashback. This is just like crack.

“I need another hit,” I say to Lorna eventually, once I’ve found the courage to use my voice.

She turns her back to me, preparing the hit on the bedside table. I light a cigarette in the hope it’ll make me feel relaxed. If the cigarette doesn’t make a difference, the hit should. It must be anxiety that I’m feeling. Heroin will sort that out for sure.

I push myself to sit upright on the bed. Leaning my back against the padded headboard, I open my eyes wider. I’m seeing in double vision. This is something that has only ever happened when I’ve speedballed, and I haven’t done that often.

Lorna passes me the filled syringe.

“Thanks,” I say, rolling back the sleeve of my pink cardigan. I look for a vein. It’s hard to see with double vision. “Can you find a vein for me, please?” I ask her.

Lorna takes my hand in her lap. She runs her fingers softly over my arm. It feels like spiders are crawling on my skin where she’s touching me. “Here’s a good one.” She wraps my tan belt around my arm, just above the elbow.

“Is this the same kind of heroin as last time?” I ask. I know the heroin in Australia is different from England because it’s white, not brown, and it’s stronger. But this wasn’t the feeling I had on it last night.

“There’s only one kind of heroin, Nicole, and this is it. This guy’s stuff is always powerful. It’s more pure.” She strokes my hair away from my face. “How are you feeling?”

“I feel fine,” I lie. I’m too scared to tell her the truth.

“Gimme your arm back. How can I give you a shot like that?”

I didn’t realise before, but now I notice my arms are wrapped around my waist. The tan belt acting as a tourniquet is hanging loose. I’m holding myself. It’s that self-protection, or self-consoling or something. I put my hand back in her lap. I want the fix. I need the fix. She inserts the needle into the vein on the inside of my elbow. She pulls back the plunger then pushes in.

I don’t feel better. If anything, I feel worse. I should be lying back, gouching out, but I’m not. I’m still sat upright. My unseeing eyes feel wide open. I’m thinking Lorna’s going to tie me up to the bed. She’s going to steal all my money and credit cards. She wants to take my designer clothes, shoes and handbags. She doesn’t really like me. I thought she did. But now I don’t think so. I’m convinced she’s here to rob me. That’s the reason she wants to hang out with me. She wants everything I have.

Deadly Road – 21 December 2000 – 8.50PM

Soul Destruction - Diary of a London Call Girl

“What do you do for work?” Lorna asks. We’re driving back to Manly after scoring smack in Parramatta. I’ve no idea where we are now. We’ve been driving for around fifteen minutes. There’s bad traffic. I wonder if there’s been an accident. It can’t be rush hour at nearly nine at night.

“I’m a hooker.” I twist a strand of my hair around my forefinger.

“No, really. What do you do for work?”

“Really.” I look at her. “I’m a hooker. A call girl in London.”

“I would never have thought it.” Lorna keeps her focus on the road. “I used to work in a brothel. That’s the lower end though, isn’t it? Not a call girl.”

“It’s all the same, just better money,” I say. “I started streetwalking at fifteen. I had to get away from my pimp so I got into escorts. Then a while after that, when I was seventeen or eighteen, I started working for madams. It’s all a blur now.”

“I know what you mean. Not exactly the things in life you want to remember.”

I enjoy being stuck in the Dolomite for a while. I stop feeling frustrated at the traffic that’s holding us up. My hit is being delayed but I might have found someone in Sydney who could be a proper friend. I’m missing Shelley so much. She couldn’t be replaced. But to have someone to really talk to here, talk to honestly, would be a godsend. The closest I have is my therapist in London, Dr Fielding, over the phone, but she can’t understand like another working girl can.

We’re talking about our experiences of working when we get near to the sight. I know I shouldn’t look because it’ll upset me. Things like that always do. But I look. I can’t not. It’s on our side of the road, a bit further up. Ambulances, paramedics, police cars and police officers are at the scene. Bodies are lying on the grass verge at the side of the road. There’s at least two children – the bodies are small. The others, I can’t tell if they’re men or women. There must be about ten bodies in total. There’s blood on the road mixed in with broken glass. Parts from the cars are strewn across the carriageway – a twisted bumper and some other black, plastic objects that I don’t know the names for. Getting closer, a policeman is diverting the traffic in our lane to the lane on the other side.

“God bless them,” I say as we drive past. I shouldn’t have stared. The image is burned into my mind. Whether my eyes are open or closed, it’s what I see. A bright-red saloon car on its side, a bottle-green hatchback smashed into the back of it and a white four-by-four behind that. The green hatchback is tiny, squashed in the middle of the red and white cars. The people in that car must have died.

Lorna parks the Dolomite down the road from my hotel. As we walk from the car to the Radisson, I pray I don’t have another flashback if we end up having sex tonight. I’ve decided that if I do, I’m going to be honest about it and tell her what’s happening. Because Dr Fielding told me, I know that most working girls have been abused as children. So the chances are that Lorna will understand. Maybe she has flashbacks too. I wonder if she wants to stop using gear. Perhaps I’ll ask her about that. We could help each other. We could be good friends. I need a good friend here.

I see past Lorna’s defects. I have the same – the blemished skin, the proof I’ve been shooting up written all over my arms, the lank hair, the dead eyes and the skinniness. It’s all surface stuff, external. Inside, she’s a good person. I can tell.